Sakai External Database

The Sakai External Database acts as the central source of most, if not all, data external to Sakai. This data is collected from various campus systems, primarily in the form of database tables and queries. The collected data is then transformed into a single source of data presented in a format amenable to the Sakai provider mechanisms.

Requirements

1. Support for Varied Data Sourcing: The data being provided to the External Database can come from a number of different sources. The Repository must be able to handle most, if not all, sources of data.
2. Freshness of Data: In some cases, the data being provided to Sakai must be as close to the current state of the data source as possible.
3. Query Execution Speed: Given that the repository generally aggregates data from external sources, the speed by which aggregated data is provided to Sakai must be optimized.
4. Synthesis of Heterogeneous Data: In some cases, multiple data sources may contain similar versions of source data. Care must be taken when synthesizing this data for presentation to Sakai.

Achitectural Design

The External Database will be hosted on a single database server. This database will, at one end, allow data to be fed into it from various source systems on campus, and at the other end will provide a database schema readable by Sakai, and formatted to be as efficient as possible in the Sakai structure.

Database

An Oracle database will be used for the Repository. Aside from our institutional core competency, Oracle provides a number of useful mechanisms for aggregating enterprise data. In addition, a number of the campus systems providing data, especially the Banner Student Information System, are Oracle instances as well, allowing the maximum flexibility when sourcing data.

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